


Journal of Ardency

by fiveyaaas



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Accidental Drug Use, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Vampire Slayer, Angst, Biting, Blood, Blood Kink, Drunken Confessions, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Five is an assassin and vampire hunter, Friends to Lovers, Guilt, Hand Jobs, If you speak Russian I apologize in advance, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Love Confessions, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Past Character Death, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Vanya is a (really bad) baby vampire, Vanya robs a blood bank and five is like “wife?”, i used google translate for the (very little) in here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:21:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27407980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: They turned her into something he would have no choice but to hate. What choice did she have then, except to hide?[Written for Fiveya Week, Day 5: Guilt]
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 28
Kudos: 70
Collections: The Occult Academy, fiveya week (round 2)





	1. this game of cruelty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rappaccini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rappaccini/gifts).



> Oh my gosh!!! So I apologize for posting day 4 a little late, so I’m gonna go ahead and post day 5 now too!!! I will post moodboards for the past three days on my tumblr after I get my homework done!!! 
> 
> This is dedicated to rappaccini, who I love so dearly. She’s such a wonderful friend, and she has kept me AFLOAT during the stressful times we’re in (which I regularly rant to her about.) Her fics are so, so lovely, and I can’t wait to reread UMP 🥰 I have appreciated all the time we have been friends, and I will appreciate the many years to come!!!! I hope she appreciates Vampya!!!!!

_“This game of cruelty_

_Hardly becomes me._

_This game of cruelty_

_Is easily the most boring part of the week._

_Why can’t you say to me_

_‘I mean something to you.”_ -Journal of Ardency, Class Actress

  
  


_ “You need to stop walking alone late at night, Vanya.”  _ Five’s voice sounded tinny over the phone. Even with the distortion to his voice, she could hear the concern in her best friend’s tone. 

“Not everybody has targets on their back,” she told him, side stepping a pile of mud delicately but still managing to get some on her rain boots. 

_ “Haven’t you seen the news lately?” _

Vanya sighed loudly, “Vampires are always worse in the fall, Five.” 

(This isn’t true. They are always bad, but this had become something of an inside joke between them. She hoped maybe it would calm his nerves.) 

(It didn’t.) 

_ “You should have waited for me.” _

Vanya scowled. “I’m not going to wait for you to finish getting your mark. Last time I did that, I didn’t get home until midnight. My mom nearly had a heart attack, Five.” 

_ “It’s dangerous.”  _

He was so stubborn. She wondered if being an assassin was hard to do with a giant stick shoved up his ass. “I’m pretty sure that the vampires probably have some sort of code with me now.  _ ‘Nosferatu, you can’t bite that one. Her best friend is a hunter and will stake your ass,’ _ they’ll say.” 

She could not see him but she could sense him frowning at her. Without much thought to the action, she thumbed at the bracelet on her wrist. She’d made it when they were about seven or eight, and she knew he still had his somewhere (she didn’t mind that he didn’t wear it when he was off snapping necks or stabbing chests.)

“It’s fine, Five. I’ll text you when I get home. Go work on that mark. You might also consider when you kill next time to just bore someone to death about vampire safety.”

_ “Vanya.” _

“Good _ bye _ , Five.” 

She clicked the call off, rolling her eyes. It was very sweet that her best friend cared about her, but she imagined his job drew him to be more paranoid than normal. He had been training all his life, but he officially went out into the field at seventeen. They were 26 now, and he had gotten more protective as time went on. She knew that part of his anxiety at the moment came from a target that had come pretty close to them, killing off one of the rogues that had caused a lot of strife recently. The problem was that the rogue had been in a coven and therefore a significant pain in the ass for all parties involved. 

Vanya didn’t see the point in worrying about it though. If vampires wanted to kill her, they would have already. 

Vanya Sokolov was not an assassin. However, her best friend was a well-known one. His father, Reginald Hargreeves, was the reason he had landed in the field so quickly. His prejudices against them were well known, and the small amounts of accords between supernatural creatures were squashed by people like him. She had met him only once, by accident. Five had never been more furious as when he found Vanya speaking to him. 

It was the  _ other  _ reason Five was afraid now. When they had gotten in that fight, she had gone to a bar. She had just turned 21, and she had wanted to feel reckless and defiant. Young women drinking alone apparently had been one vampire in town’s particular target. 

By the time Five found her that night, she had nearly died from blood loss. As Five had killed Leonard in public and nobody even batted an eye about it, the vampires had kept a wide berth from her in particular. 

Her phone kept insistently ringing, informing her that Five was calling by the ringtone alone. She sighed, not answering the phone calls. It was getting out of hand. He needed to learn a lesson about boundaries. Part of the reason Vanya was walking home alone was just to prove to Five that she  _ could _ . She didn’t need his protection, and given the nature of his profession, he might not even always be around to give it. Part of her was mad that he had the profession at all, mainly because of the danger he put himself in just by doing it. She figured his father would disagree on that. 

Vanya’s phone rang again, but she dropped it when she heard the voice speaking.

“What’s a pretty girl like you walking alone?”

Vanya stiffened, reaching for the stake and trying to toe her phone back to her. It was cracked, possibly broken, but if she could get to it, then she could call Five as she ran. The stake was subtly kept tucked in a pocket sewn inside her flannel. If she moved down to pick up the phone, she knew that the vampire would see the movement. Likely, she had already heard the movement of her reaching into the pocket.

The voice spoke again, a chill in her voice not unlike the bite of autumn air. “It’s not safe to walk alone, you know.”

She slowly, cautiously turned around. 

“Maybe the pretty ones really  _ can’t _ be smart too,” she chuckled and before Vanya could react, she darted forward, teeth sinking into her neck.

* * *

Five did not necessarily  _ enjoy  _ his job. He killed people for a living. Well, people and supernatural creatures. Hunting vampires wasn’t necessarily anything that brought him shame. Pulverizing one of them was one of the few times he felt pleasure in killing, but then that had not been so much about the killing. On the harder nights, Vanya’s ashen face would paint his eyelids, and he would be forced to suffer insomnia.

Five knew that Vanya thought he was a little barbaric, both for  _ what _ he did and  _ how  _ he felt about it. In most cases, it was clinical. The thing was- all his life, he had been trained that the vampires were amoral, cold creatures. He had never been sure if he believed it until he had seen her nearly dead before him. He had killed vampires before that one, but it had been 100% clinical up to that point. He viewed it as a job. Sure, he took pride in his work, but he took pride in everything he did. 

Vanya had been very out of it on that night, or else he knew she would have been disgusted with him.  _ He _ knew that it was just a job, but he also knew that Vanya would never think of it that way, despite the blasé persona she tried to adopt when she spoke about it. Vanya had always been delicate. She truly believed that vampires could see reason, probably thought them capable of love. She was very naive- something he attributed to her because she didn’t have the life experience he had. He had been training since he was young to see the supernatural creatures for what they were. Vanya was blinded by her naivety. He loved her for it, but it made his life a living hell. 

Killing the most recent mark (the one that he feared pissed of the vampires) had been easier, if he were to be honest with himself. It had been so easy because this mark was close to  _ her _ , capable of killing her if she so chose. The pack of rogues had sprung up in their hometown a few months ago, and after he had killed a vampire to protect Vanya, his feelings for Vanya became well known among them. 

Unfortunately, with covens, they also had personal entanglements. He wasn’t sure if it was some sort of pathetic vampire unrequited love story or if it was sort of familial bond, but he knew that there was a rogue running around looking for revenge. Vanya’s involvement with Five put her in danger. 

That is why when Vanya hung up on him, he tried calling her again and again. He knew he probably was acting possessive (or worse, clingy), but he saw it as simply being observant of the facts. The facts were A) Vanya was well-known among bloodsuckers as being involved with a vampire hunter, B) Five had just killed one of their own, and C) they were out for revenge.

Five scowled as her phone went straight to voicemail. She had  _ turned her phone off _ ? He gets it. He  _ knows  _ that she likes to be independent, that she wants to prove to him that she doesn’t need him, but any evidence of her going off alone always ends in  _ something _ bad happening. 

_ That’s not true,  _ he reminded himself. Vanya was smart. Maybe she had just gotten home already, and her phone had died beforehand. It would take a bit to charge. Clearly, this wasn’t about him. Vanya wasn’t petty enough to put herself in danger just to piss him off. 

His mark tonight was a human, something that he did less frequently than with vampires. He never asked why he was to do a killing, and he never spoke back. He was an assassin, painting over what he did with morality accomplished nothing but pain. So, he compartmentalized. He killed, not giving as much conscious thought to it as he probably should, and he moved on. The mark took next to no time at all, and he felt nothing as he gathered evidence to make it look like a suicide. This particular mark, unlike many, was just an hour or so out of town. Usually, he had to travel a little for assignments. 

He got breaks between jobs, sure, ones he took primarily at Vanya’s house, Ms. Sokolov chiding him about eating more and going off to cook something. When Vanya and her mother started arguing in Russian, he would have to hide his smile. Ms. Sokolov didn’t think anything of him being an assassin though he’d had to explain multiple times that it was not a mafia job, and she still didn’t believe him. Him being an assassin? Fine. Him putting Vanya in danger with his work? Out of the question. Ms. Sokolov was entirely convinced that working in the mob would put her in danger. 

Maybe he’d call Ms. Sokolov, actually. She would convince Vanya to let him take her home every night. Her mother had always been much more reasonable about having someone protect her.

Climbing into his car and flicking on the bluetooth on his phone, he dialed Ms. Sokolov and listened to it ring twice before she picked up. 

“Five?” 

“It’s me, Ms. Sokolov.” 

“You know I’ve asked you to call me ‘Tatiana,’” she chastised. 

He screwed his features up, checking over to his mirror as he pulled the car out of a parking space. “I was just calling about Vanya.”

“Oh, will you be later to get her?” 

He frowned; Vanya should be home by this point, shouldn’t she? “She walked home alone.”

Vanya’s mother made a worried noise. “Did she not let you pick her up again? I can talk to her about this, Five, don’t worry. She’ll be home any minute if she’s ”

“Thank you,” he sighed. “I was worried for a second that I was being overbearing.”

Ms. Sokolov scoffed at the thought. Five was well-aware that she considered him her son-in-law, regularly asking Vanya when they would get married while Five tried not to choke on his bowl of borscht. 

“I’ll talk to her when she gets home,” Ms. Sokolov said. “I set some blinis in the fridge for when you’re home.”

He smiled, turning onto the highway. At this point, he wondered why he bothered having an apartment. “ _ Spasibo,  _ Tatiana.”

“ _ Pozhaluysta, moy syn, _ ” she replied, hanging up. He wondered if it was because she’d never had her own son that she treated Five like he was her son or if it was because he and Vanya had been friends since they were in kindergarten. Vanya had hidden behind her mother’s leg, having just moved from Russia the previous year, her already being shy didn’t coincide well with feeling like an outsider to kids who had all known each other since daycare. Five took her under his wing, mispronouncing a Russian greeting before explaining private school kids were just the rich version of morons. It was one of the few times Five had ever willingly made friends with anyone, but Vanya had taken his hand and they’d been best friends since. 

He reached the Sokolov’s apartment an hour later, opening his wallet’s specific compartment for the key to their place (he was aware that protection actually  _ was _ excessive, he had mainly only used it to see Vanya roll her eyes in the fond way she did.) He pulled off his shoes at the door and settled his jacket on a rack. 

Once fully inside, he went straight for the fridge, scarfing down his portion of the blini. Vanya’s plate was untouched, but then she never ate as much as he did. 

He walked to Vanya’s room, only stopping briefly to make sure Ms. Sokolov was safe in her bed. She was, a book half-opened and her cheek resting against it. 

Vanya had nice pajamas for him in her closet, and he was already preparing for the nice feeling of the cotton and curling up to her before he went to sleep when he opened her door. 

To find her room empty. 

Vanya was gone.


	2. i drew your name in the sand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first four chapters of this are done, so I’ll be posting the first four today!

_ “I drew your name in the sand _

_ Came to the beach ‘cause we used to go here _

_ I watched the blue wave cover it over _

_ And do what the ocean does best _

_ I know the past is the past _

_ Then again, the present’s nothing without it.” -  _ Love You So Bad, Ezra Furman 

Vanya’s nails dug into the earth surrounding her. Blood and mud caked deep into them, but she couldn’t get out of her entrapment. When she screamed for help, the mud sank into her throat and she was effectively drowning in it. 

_ ‘Where am I?’  _ Vanya thought to herself. It was dark, so dark and claustrophobic. She was entombed in some sort of earth, deep enough for her to see the creatures that existed beneath the surface, trying to wiggle near her. 

She had been buried alive. 

“Five!” Vanya screamed, not sure why his name was the first she called. The way her voice sounded, from her mouth being coated in the mud of her macabre entrapment, anyways, wouldn’t permit anything other than a warbled moan to come out of her throat. She was going to die, and her best friend wouldn’t even know where to find her body. Her mother would look for her and Five would look for her and she’d never be found. Tears raked down her face, abhorrently viscous in a way that didn’t feel entirely human. 

And, as she had that thought, she understood. 

She wasn’t human. 

Not anymore. 

She remembered once, long ago, when Vanya had been nearly drained by a bite. She had asked Five if she would be turned because of it, and she remembered the horror in his eyes at the concept. 

_ ‘No, Vanya,’  _ Five had told her.  _ ‘You have to have their blood after they’ve drained yours. And then you’d have to be killed and buried in a graveyard.’  _

_ ‘That specific?’  _ Vanya had laughed at the absurdity of it.  _ ‘What happens if they don’t put you in a graveyard?’  _

_ ‘You die.’ _

She wondered, then, which graveyard her Maker had chosen. She wondered if she could reach out to her Maker. When she tried calling to her mentally, a sound like a dial tone came to her mind. 

So, she was on her own, then. 

Vanya knew that after she had gotten out of the grave, she would have to drink blood. It could be sunny up there right now, for all she knew. The thought made her stomach knot. Vanya wondered if vampires could still get stomach aches with only a diet of blood. 

Her gums started to ache like the week after her wisdom teeth came out when Five had babysat her for her mother while she was high off her mind. She had kept screaming about how that was the worst pain of her entire life under the influence of Vicodin, but, now, at the clicking sound she heard before her canines stabbed through the lining, she wondered if she had been mistaken. 

If there was anything nice about the fangs, they distracted her from being submerged and suffocated in dirt. 

She wondered how useful they’d be at getting her out of here. Experimentally, she bit down above her, thinking she could bite her way to the surface. 

“Motherfucker,” Vanya groaned, but it came out more like  _ ‘mu-fur-cka’  _ as her mouth became impossibly more full with dirt. She’d be coughing the stuff up in an hour, she imagined. 

A thought came to her from the movie,  _ Kill Bill, Volume 2.  _ In the film, Uma Thurman’s character had punched her way out of this very predicament. Vanya figured, yeah, she could do that and went to work. 

A second thought came to her, moments later, from the time she and Five had binge watched  _ Mythbusters,  _ having mutually agreed that that was the one  _ Discovery Channel  _ show they were not allowed to watch without one another and pinky-swore not to watch episodes apart, and they had proven this very myth, of being able to punch out of a grave, wrong. 

If Vanya had been able to speak properly, she’d be ranting about Quentin Tarantino for providing bold-faced lies that gave her such ephemeral hope.

Vanya wondered, for a very brief instant, if she should just lay here until she starved to death. Five wouldn’t want to be her friend if she were a vampire, and her mother wouldn’t love her. Nobody would want her as she was. 

It was a grim thought. It was also, likely, a very true thought. She would be effectively dead to them. 

Still, she couldn’t know for sure her mother would leave her behind. She knew Five would cut all ties with her, and it hurt her on a level she couldn’t explain. Her mother, though, might want her. At the very least, she’d want to know how her daughter had died. 

_ ‘How the fuck am I supposed to get out of here?’  _ Vanya thought. 

It was as she had it, that she heard a man, who she assumed to be a worker for the graveyard humming along to a semi-old Shakira song. Vanya could feel his pulse thrumming along as he shook his, apparently truthful, hips to the beat. 

And all thoughts went out the window. 

Her nails clawed into the earth, hooking inside and ripping it apart. She was moving so quickly that she could barely even register it. Certainly, she had gained enhanced agility by this point. 

As she emerged, she saw a very old man with an archaic iPod video. He was a tiny guy, and he looked like he may be experiencing some sort of major cardiac event at the sight of her. 

After Vanya had hurled out all of the mud, she tried speaking to him.

“You’re so old,” Vanya whimpered. “I can’t kill you.” 

The man, unfortunately, could not hear her because of the Shakira playing in his ears. She almost felt like scolding him about playing the music so loud with earbuds, considering that they couldn’t be good for a man who could go deaf at any second. 

Acting on impulse, Vanya pulled the earbuds from his ears. “Please don’t ever play music that loud again, sir.”

His eyes glazed over. “I will never play music that loud ever again.” 

Vanya blinked before she realized she’d just glamoured into having a less abusive relationship with his ears. And then she realized, with all of her hesitancy in hurting him, that she could glamour him to get away. 

Vanya urged her voice to be compelling as she spoke to the old man.  _ “Run away. Now.” _

He hauled ass away, illuminated in the faint moonlight, and Vanya could see and hear his heart pounding as he clambered off. She panicked, worried that the man would keel over and die from the strain she’d put on his heart. His pulse was so fast that her fangs sank into her lips and became coated in blood. Abhorrently, it tasted much better than the dirt. 

_ ‘Five will probably kill me,’  _ Vanya realized.  _ ‘He will see a just-turned baby vamp, who, at any second, could become a seasoned killer. And he will kill me.’ _

Vanya wondered if maybe she had been right when she thought to just never leave the grave. She would become a killer soon, and she would lose everything. 

As she wallowed in her misery, her fangs retracted, her gums feeling a sharp twinge again as her teeth went back to relatively normal. She wondered idly if there was some sort of Tylenol or something that would help that ache, or if the fact that she was dead meant Tylenol worked no longer. It was a dismal, abhorrent thought, and she stared longingly at the grave she had been buried in, understanding why, in that moment, Edward Cullen had been such a dramatic bitch and empathizing with him greatly. 

Wait… 

Edward Cullen. 

His thing was that he didn’t eat people, right? He ate animals? 

Vanya could do that. She ate meat regularly. Eating it raw couldn’t be that much worse. Wait, did Edward Cullen eat the animals or did he just drain them of blood? She couldn’t remember. 

She estimated it to be about 9:00PM, so she did the only thing she could possibly comprehend doing in that moment, to know what to do next, and walked to the nearest  _ Barnes & Noble.  _

Now, if one were to ask why she chose to do this, not say, rob a blood blank, or even go to her mother who had lived in Russia during a very gruesome time and had seen some shit, Vanya would rightfully explain that this was a calculated move, a brilliant move. If she were able to adequately understand her nature, she could master it in the scant hours before  _ Barnes & Noble  _ would close. 

It was a genius move, and she prided herself on having already become a wise immortal. 

She found that once she knew where she was going, she could get there impossibly fast. Vanya patted herself on her back as she landed in front of the store so promptly, opening the main entrance with so much strength the foundation around the door started to crack. Whoops. 

Vanya promised herself that she would pay for the damage, tip-toeing to the paranormal romance section in hopes she wouldn’t lose control of her strength again. As she started piling  _ The Twilight Saga, The Vampire Diaries, House of Night,  _ and  _ Vampire Academy,  _ a worker stopped by and asked her if she needed any help. 

“I need so much help,” she said softly.

He walked forward, as if in a trance. She realized she’d used her glamour, panicking again that she apparently had no control over it. 

“What do you need?” His pulse was pounding against his neck as he spoke, a bead of sweat forming just under his jaw. She walked forward, equally as entranced by him as he was her (if the tenting of his khakis was any indication.)

“You,” she answered, opening her mouth, hearing the  _ click  _ as her teeth sank out again. 

“I found  _ Vampire Academy  _ to be a horrible example to the youths,” a familiar voice commented. 

Vanya stiffened, all of her instincts telling her to run from that voice, but she  _ couldn’t. _

She turned around. 

* * *

He had grown frantic, searching for her. He had just finished calling every hospital in the state (after scouring the city in places she might’ve been hiding) when Tatiana found him in her living room.

“What’s wrong, Five?” 

She had her head cocked to the side, peering at him sleepily. Vanya shared many of her mother’s features, but he had never met her father to confirm who she looked more like. “Isn’t Vanya at work?”

“Ms. Sokolov.” He knew that she heard the panic, could feel dread rising inside of him as he knew what he had to say next.

She already read it on his face. He was an idiot; he should have told her as soon as he found out that Vanya was missing. Five had not been thinking, though, surely she would understand why he didn’t tell her. 

“Where is she?”

“I thought she was here by the time that I got home, and-“ He was not certain if he had trailed off, not knowing how to explain that he knew her daughter was missing or if she cut him off. If Five were not an assassin and didn’t know Vanya to not be impulsive, he wouldn’t have even been concerned at all, likely. Neither would Tatiana if she had not seen everything she had seen in her life. 

Finally, the words that Tatiana had said hit him. “Is she dead?” 

Five’s vision blurred, “She  _ can’t  _ be, she’s not-“

“Where is she? If she’s not dead?” At the sound of her voice, he winced. 

“I’m going to-“

“I trusted you with her. I trusted that you would never let your job get her hurt, and you have  _ failed  _ her. I thought of you like a  _ son.” _

Five pushed the words to the side because what she was saying was irrelevant right now. What mattered was that he  _ found Vanya _ . He would be okay once this was all over. It would be fine, it would be-

“If you really loved her, this wouldn’t have happened. If she is dead, it will be your fault.”

“I’m going to find her,” he said weakly, stumbling off before he could find out what she was doing. He would find her, he would find her, he would find her. 

He drove to the hospitals in the city again and then everywhere Vanya regularly spent time, checking with everyone she regularly spoke to. When her employer gave him no new information as he checked again later in the day, he drove from her workplace to the library she sometimes went to when she was stressed. On his way there, he passed by the cemetery. Five stopped driving abruptly, stomach sinking.

The conversation they’d had on the phone last night reverberated in his skull and then a conversation once when he’d explained how exactly humans were turned.

He parked his car, getting out of it mechanically. There was no possible way. 

If she had just  _ listened  _ to him, he wouldn’t have even had to be  _ entertaining  _ this thought. If she had just listened to what he was saying to her, there would be no reason for him to be worrying at all. She  _ knew  _ it was dangerous. He had just taken that assignment, and he had told her numerous times that she needed to be careful until things went back to normal again.

Five was not sure if he was walking to this graveyard consciously or if it was just instinctual to look and see if any of the graves around there looked tampered with at all. There was the possibility, of course, if a vampire had gotten her…

No, he wouldn’t think of that. He couldn’t. He would find her.

He didn’t find her.

But he did find something else. 

The scent of freshly mowed grass hit his nose, knowing maintenance must have been there that night. He walked towards the scent, imagining if a person had been there, and she had been hungry-

It was clear something had escaped the confines of this mud. A newborn vampire, regardless of who it was, had emerged from the earth in front of him. Likely, it had been moments before he had gotten there as well, seeing some of the piles of dirt had gnarled with freshly clipped grass. 

He searched around, trying to find anything, anything that would confirm what he was pretty certain he already knew. 

He found it. 

It was her bracelet, one he had a match to tucked into his pocket. 

His best friend was out there somewhere, and he knew that he would have to kill her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!!


	3. i don’t get you

_ “I don’t get you  _

_ I can’t forget what you’ve forgotten _

_ All along _

_ I’ve never been so alone.” - _ Don’t Cry Out, Shiny Toy Guns

  
Her Maker was about as pleasant as one would expect their murderer to be. 

Was she her murderer? Vanya wasn’t really sure if that was the phrasing supposed to be used there, considering she didn’t know if she really considered herself  _ dead.  _ Though she had no heartbeat, she felt like she was still very much herself. The ache in her throat was the only true difference, and she figured that she could dismiss it as strep throat instead of acknowledge it for what it was. If she did that, she could pretend that this would all be fine. 

“You’re too bubbly,” the vampire in front of her lilted. “It’s irritating, stop that.”

“What’s your accent?” Vanya asked, wondering if her rain boots made her look too bubbly. She couldn’t exactly take them  _ off,  _ it was already muddy outside on top of the fact that she was still covered in grave dirt and her own blood. Taking off her rain boots would take away the one comfort she had, save for the bracelet on her wrist. She reached for it subconsciously, finding her wrist bare. If her heart could beat, it would be speeding. She supposed it was nice, then, that it couldn’t. It scared her, how much it felt like she’d lost Five completely without her bracelet. Vanya could hear everything around her, including people’s pulses, so she didn’t doubt that her heart would be pounding in fear and pain from the thought. If her Maker knew that she was panicking, she would at the very least ask about it. 

“My accent,” the vampire said. “Is not important for you to know.”

“How is speaking in a British accent supposed to be mysterious?”

The vampire’s eyes twitched. “Stop talking,” she commanded. 

Vanya found that she couldn’t speak then, which was upsetting. She’d been forced to abandon the pile of books and the bookseller she’d nearly drained, who the older vampire had taken one look at and sucked all of the blood from his body while maintaining eye contact with her. Vanya wasn’t sure if she had been relieved or offended. 

“You kept sending these mental puppy dog eyes,” her Maker said. “It was too much. I couldn’t handle it any longer; you were too depressing.”

Vanya tried to speak again, but she couldn’t. Experimentally, she thought loudly in the direction of the woman,  _ ‘Is this some sort of  _ Carmilla  _ scenario?’ _

“Laura was  _ much _ less annoying than you.”

Was  _ she  _ Carmilla?

“No, moron.”

Vanya glanced down, glad she couldn’t blush. 

“You were turned for a reason, Vanya. Remember that.”

She picked mud out of her nails, wishing she could go away from there. She was sure the vampire wasn’t completely abhorrent, but she was really mean. 

“It was your friend’s fault, you see.”

Vanya’s ears perked, trying to give no outward indication that she was really listening but knowing that she was probably capable of reading her thoughts, regardless. 

“He did something very awful, you see. I had to do what was necessary.”

Vanya watched the feral look in her Maker’s eyes, and she understood, as she had for a bit now, that she had been turned because Five had killed somebody important to her Maker. Meaning that she likely intended to let Five see what Vanya had become. 

She had to escape. 

Her bracelet might be gone, but the stake tucked in her flannel’s pocket was not. 

As soon as her hand curled around it though, she felt her skin start to warp, melt-

The vampire turned around. “Keep your hand on that stake until you learn your lesson.”

It was an order from her Maker; she had to listen to it. She could not move her hand until she learned her lesson.

She didn’t know what she was supposed to learn, though. She thought she had already learned everything- that the universe really just did not care about her at all. 

“Move your hand.”

She did, peering at the raw, bloodied skin. 

“I cannot kill you, for you have not served my purpose. I’ve decided, though, that you might actually suffer more if you were completely alone. It’s tainted all of your thoughts, this loneliness. So, this is where I leave you. You will come to me when I call for you, yes?”

Vanya spoke, having the command to stay silent ease off of her shoulders. “Yes.”

She nodded sharply, flitting off. Vanya reached out for her weakly, but she was already gone. 

It was disconcerting, seeing her Maker leave. She stumbled around, knowing all of her thoughts had been focused on blood instead of the somewhat welcome distraction of her Maker. Now, all she could think of was her thirst. 

She knew that there were many things preventing her from getting blood. One, she wasn’t entirely certain where all the veins were, and she also had not the faintest idea the difference between veins and arteries, which was probably essential knowledge. Two, she didn’t really want to use her glamour, all things considered. It felt like she was taking advantage of people, and she wasn’t even sure how to turn it off. Three, she knew she had to get to shelter before daybreak.

Where  _ would _ she hide when the sun came? 

It suddenly struck her, that she’d never see the sun again. She felt the bloodied tears start streaming down her cheeks, and she wiped them away, grimacing at the blood she was losing. Still, she stopped walking, thinking of all that she was going to miss out on now. At this point, maybe she didn’t want to hide from the sun. Maybe she should embrace it one last time. 

But as she had the thought, she swiveled around, eyes going wide. Her fangs sunk through her gums, and she walked forward in the same vaguely trance-like state as she’d had at the bookstore. 

A blood bank. She’d found a blood bank. Two weeks ago, she’d donated to one. Maybe they still had it stored, and she could snatch that instead. 

Revulsion filled her, at the thought of stealing blood from people who truly needed it, but she couldn’t take it any longer. 

Vanya broke the door open, and a bunch of people walked over to her. She panicked, hissing at them and then cringing at the fact that she’d just  _ hissed.  _ They were trying to dial a number, and she realized what they were doing immediately. 

“Drop you phones,” she called out, actually trying to coax her voice into the glamour. They all dropped their phones before they’d even dialed it, and she was thankful. Five wouldn’t find her this way. 

“Everybody,  _ leave.”  _ When she realized that one of the people in the process of donating was standing up, she added quickly, “Er, leave it is medically advised. Or if you don’t have a patient or whatever.”

The nurse pulled the needle out of the donor, and Vanya internally recoiled. Needles and blood used to make her anxious, and it appeared only needles were that way now. She couldn’t precisely say to stop that though, considering she wanted them all to  _ go.  _ It was making her antsy, seeing them all there. Even though she knew she was a vampire now, she hadn’t changed in not wanting to hurt people. 

When they were all gone, she picked up bags of blood wherever she could find them. It felt like she was binging, but she couldn’t stop. A frenzy had taken over, and she sank into it, knowing she wasn’t hurting anyone at the very least.

* * *

Five was hesitant, driving around. Each time he got a call from his employers, he clicked it off, knowing they’d be pissed but ultimately unable to do anything about it, given who his father is. He’d called his boss earlier, explaining that Vanya was missing and that he was searching for her, worried she’d gotten hurt somehow. It was understood to them that Vanya was his family, and he’d lose his job before he let something happen to her. It likely wasn’t his boss calling but one of the other hunters, trying to give him updates about what he assumed to be a young vampire wreaking havoc on the city. 

He had no idea if Vanya  _ was _ wreaking havoc, but he’d prepared himself for the worst. Even though he hadn’t told his employers that he knew she was a vampire, he still had resolved himself to killing her. The only person who  _ could  _ kill her would be him, and he would make it quick, not letting her suffer for a second. It wouldn’t hurt at all if he did it, but he imagined anybody else  _ would  _ make it hurt for her. 

Five had to figure out where to live, he knew. He had saved enough money that he wouldn’t have to be with Reginald, who he would never want to see again after he’d killed Vanya, knowing his lips would pull into a smug smile, would probably say he was proud of him for having no sentiment. Most of the time, he’d stayed with her and Tatiana, but he knew that Tatiana would never want to see his face again. The knowledge that he’d failed her made him want to perish just as much as Vanya would. Failing Vanya though… there was nothing to forgive it. 

But he  _ had  _ to kill her. It was his job, his duty, his-

It was  _ wrong  _ that he even had to make this choice. Five had never given much thought to what he did, but he’d been raised his entire life to have only one purpose.

It was  _ Vanya _ , though. How could he hurt his best friend? Maybe he’d been raised to only have  _ this  _ as his purpose, but it was  _ Vanya.  _ She was the purpose to his life that he’d  _ chosen.  _

The thing was- if Five let her go, she’d run around, hurting other people (which would upset her, deeply, he knew, if she had any humanity left at all, which he wasn’t certain), and somebody else would find her. She wouldn’t know how to fight back or run from a hunter, and he didn’t think anybody else would make it painless. It’s not like he would have if it had been anyone else.

Apparently, even though he was reluctantly driving along in his attempt to find her, he found her quickly anyways. One look at the blood bank clued him into it being broken into. There were no cars in the parking lot, which confused him immensely, considering they would most likely be open today. 

His feet trudged forward, walking inside the damaged building. 

When he found her, he nearly dropped to his knees. 

Blood fell from her eyes, and he realized she was crying as she drank down blood bags. It reminded him of when she was about nine, and he’d given her his juice box when she’d cried at the lunch table after someone had made fun of her. Except now, she was both crying and drinking blood. 

“Vanya,” Five called out, despite the feeling of wrongness. His fist loosened, the stake nearly falling from it. 

There was no possible way that he could kill her. 

But she was scared of that, crawling away desperately from him like a wild animal. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Five found himself promising. He crouched down beside her, catching onto her leg and dropping his stake completely on the ground next to him. She screamed in fear, trying to jerk away from his hold, and he nearly lost his grip, not wanting to touch her when she didn’t want him to but also knowing that she’d be in danger if she ran out of there. Five refused to let somebody hurt her, and he had to find a way that she’d be safe from anybody hurting or finding her. 

“You have a stake,” Vanya croaked.

“I won’t stake you, V,” Five whispered. 

“You wanted to  _ kill _ me.”

Hearing her say it, he winced, imagining the concept of actually hurting her. Would he have always come to this conclusion? Would he have hurt her?

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeated quietly. 

“Why  _ not?” _

Five glanced up at her in shock. He realized why she was asking. “You want to die?” Five responded, incredulously. 

She looked away, blinking her red eyes quickly. The tears still came, making her look like she was hemorrhaging. Despite the completely inhuman quality to her tears, they still filled him with the protective feeling that always came. 

It was his fault that she’d become this in the first place. 

“I will find a way for you to be okay.”

“I’m never going to be human, Five.”

“That’s no what I  _ said.  _ I am going to make you  _ okay,  _ human or otherwise.” 

“Why?”

Five wished that there was some way for her to realize just how much she meant to him, but there was also  _ guilt,  _ knowing that he’d even  _ thought  _ of hurting her. This was his best friend, and she wasn’t even wrong to worry about him being untrustworthy. 

“Vanya, I promise you. No matter what happens, I won’t let you get hurt.” 

“I don’t trust you.” 

She could likely hear his heart skip a beat, and he stared at the ground resolutely, trying to look as unaffected by her comment as he possibly could.

He wasn’t convincing anybody. 

“You don’t have to go with me,” he said finally. “I won’t be mad at you if you don’t. You’re probably right, not to trust me. I can just… go.”

“Are you going to tell somebody?” Vanya’s voice was hesitant as she asked it, and he stopped trying to stand, sighing. 

“Vanya, you broke into a blood bank. People will know to search for you, whether or not I tell them.”

“And they’ll kill me?”

“Stop sounding fucking  _ hopeful  _ at that,” Five snapped, losing all of his patience. “Some of us actually do care if you die.”

“I already did,” she screamed, standing up and seeming to tower over him.

He scrambled to his feet, making his voice cold, “You went to a  _ blood bank.  _ Clearly, you didn’t want to hurt anybody. That says to me that you’re here, and you’re alive, and you’re not going to be a fucking idiot and get yourself hurt.”

Her nostrils flared. “Right, and what even  _ was  _ your intention when you came to me?” 

“It doesn’t matter! I’m not going to hurt you, not when…” he trailed off, glancing around. “You sent them away, didn’t you? That’s why this place is empty?”

She didn’t answer, so he plowed on, “See, Vanya? You’re still you. You’re still my best friend.”

“Not in the ways that matter,” she said quietly.

He shook his head, grabbing her shoulders, “You’re my best friend, V. You’re family. We gotta stick together, okay? Your mom would-“

“My mom is not going to see me like this,” she interrupted.

He made a small noise. “Vanya,  _ please.  _ Please let me help you.”

“How would you even be able to?” Vanya asked. “I can’t keep robbing from blood banks, Five.” 

“We’ll figure something out.”

She sighed, loudly, before offering her hand. He took it, slipping on her bracelet before they left the blood bank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	4. leave some shards under the belly

_ “Leave some shards under the belly  _

_ Lay some grease inside my hand  _

_ It’s a sentimental jury  _

_ And the makings of a good plan _

_ You’ve come to love me lightly _

_ Yeah you’ve come to hold me tight _

_ Is this motion everlasting  _

_ Or do shudders pass in the night?”  _ -Evil, Interpol

She didn’t have to feed immediately. It was nice, knowing that she didn’t. If she had, she wouldn’t have been able to make it. The thought of Five seeing her drinking blood again didn’t sit right with her. Even though he was being perfectly kind to her, he was still a trained vampire hunter. He’d probably been disgusted to see her, which made her want to jump out of his car and hide somewhere. Dawn would come soon, and she didn’t even know where he planned to take her. 

When she realized he was trying to go to her mother’s place, she  _ did  _ try to jump out of the car, but he grabbed onto her before she could. His hand on her wrist made her pause her movements, even though it confused her to do so. “I can’t see her,” Vanya whimpered. 

“You  _ can,”  _ he promised, running his thumb over her wrist. “She’s worried about you, V.”

“What if I try to drink her blood?”

“She’d probably not care, considering you’re  _ alive.” _

Vanya snorted, “Debatably.”

“You  _ are.” _

“Do you consider other vampires alive?” His hand was still on her, and she wanted to respond to it. She also knew he’d move it if she did, and she didn’t want that. It was likely for the same reason that she had called his name first when she’d awoken underground, but she didn’t want to think about that. This was not the  _ time  _ to think about that. 

Five pondered her question, “Not really. But I didn’t know them before they were turned.”

“People don’t just change their mind on that kind of thing.”

“Would you rather I killed you?” Five sneered.

“Well, yeah.”

He seethed, honking his horn at a pedestrian that he nearly ran over. “Vanya, that’s not happening. And I’m taking you to Tatiana’s because you need protection from the sun. The curtains in your room aren’t quite opaque enough for me, so I’m keeping you in the closet while you sleep and I’ll run by Bed, Bath, and Beyond to find some that truly block out the sun.” 

“But, Five, I’ve been out of the closet since I was sixteen! You should know this, considering you got me my first bi pride flag.” 

Five rolled his eyes. “Hilarious,” he said dryly.

“I don’t think my mom is going to like this. What if she starts to put a bunch of garlic in her food?”

He pursed his lips, “Well, for one, it wouldn’t really do anything if she did. Two, she’s your  _ parent,  _ she’d not going to try to kill you.”

“Your dad would try to kill you, in her case!” Vanya protested.

“Your mother actually loves you, V. Now, are you going to run away if I move my hand? Because I don’t want to run over anybody.”

Vanya didn’t want him to move his hand, but it had nothing to do with running away. “I won’t try to get out,” she confirmed. 

Five offered her a tight smile, watching the road and setting his hands back on 10 and 2. God, he was such a  _ nerd.  _ Who  _ actually _ put their hands on 10 and 2?

“Have you eaten?” Vanya asked suspiciously. “You look like you haven’t eaten all day. Or night. Also, when did you sleep last? Are you okay?”

“‘M fine, V.”

“You’re sure?”

“I didn’t eat or sleep because I was finding you.”

“You idiot! Eat something when we get home.”

Five’s smile grew wide, and she realized why just as he said it. “You called it  _ home.” _

“It means nothing,” Vanya insisted. “My mom doesn’t want me, Five. She’s going to kick me out, you know.”

“Then glamour her not to.”

She gasped in revulsion, “I would  _ never.” _

“Then at least  _ wait  _ to see if she cares. If you care about her opinion, then maybe  _ listen  _ to it.”

“Did I ask for your advice or opinions?”

He sighed, “I just want you to not assume your mother hates you. She was terrified when she realized you had gone missing. She practically disowned me right there.

“She  _ what?” _

“She basically told me she regretted ever calling me son,” Five spat out, and she could tell there was something he didn’t add. He was trying to sound as angry as possible because he didn’t want to let on how upset he was by her mother saying that to him. 

But she knew. Of  _ course _ she knew. 

“Oh, Five,” she breathed, reaching for him without any thought to the action. He’d set all of his stakes in the back, unable to touch her and burn her skin. “She didn’t mean it, you know.”

“I think she did,” his voice was hollow. Tatiana had been the only person to ever offer a maternal presence in his life after his stepmother, Grace, passed away. She’d been killed by vampires when he was young, and his actual mother had died in childbirth. 

“Five, she  _ loves  _ you,” Vanya told him. “She loves you because I love you.” It felt weird, saying that, when she’d remembered how she had cried out his name in her own gravesite. She wondered if Five noticed the way her voice had shook when she had said the words, wondered if he assumed it was because she didn’t  _ mean _ them. Even though she very much meant them, she didn’t know  _ how,  _ and it was confusing. Vanya found herself asking him, “Do vampires experience stronger feelings when they’re turned?”

“They can, I think. Why? Are you okay?” He looked away from the road, concerned. 

“It’s just…” she trailed off, not knowing what she was supposed to tell him. “I feel like I feel  _ too much.” _

“That’s normal,” he promised. “It doesn’t happen every time, but a lot of people theorize that’s why the younger ones tend to struggle the most with control. Have you felt disoriented at all?”

“Kind of,” she said, thinking back to when she’d tasted blood earlier and felt like she’d been somewhere else completely. Unbidden, her fangs clicked out, and Five knit his eyebrows together, likely concerned about the fact that she appeared hungry. “When I was  _ feeding,”  _ she moaned, feeling her lips grow coated with blood from where they’d been punctured. That odd feeling of almost  _ desire  _ that she’d felt in the bookstore came back. “Oh, God, Five, what’s happening?”

He cleared his throat, turning his attention back to the road. “I think you’re thirsty,” he said, voice almost heady. “Was it not..” He cleared his throat again, shaking his head like he was trying to clear it. “Was it not enough that you drank earlier?”

“I don’t think so,” Vanya said, watching the pulse at his neck.  _ ‘You don’t know the difference between veins and arteries,’  _ Vanya reminded herself, but it sounded weak even in her thoughts. Her body was tensed up, trying to resist the urge to pounce on him.  _ ‘Five is friend, not food.’  _ She shook, crossing her legs and placing her hands atop her knees. The sultry quality to her voice when she spoke stunned her, “How do I know if I’ve drank enough?” 

His eyes were glazing over, and she realized she might be using the glamour. But she hadn’t commanded anything, had she? “I don’t know,” Five said finally. 

They reached Tatiana’s place, and Vanya groaned. The noise made Five jump before he weakly told her, “Are you going to be able to manage if you see her?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, thirst forgotten for just a moment. The thought of hurting her was too much. “Five, I can’t go in there. I can’t do it. Don’t make me.”

“We’ll find a hotel,” he finally said. “There are a few places that are more friendly to your-“

He was about to say  _ ‘your kind.’  _ She stiffened, “You don’t have to help me, you know.” 

“I want to help you, Vanya,” Five insisted. “I want to, and I’ll do anything I can to make sure you’re okay.”

Her body felt too coiled, like at any moment she would spring up and attack. Once she knew she wouldn’t see her mother, her mind was drifting to what it had before. She wanted to ask if he really meant anything, and she was shocked at her own brazenness, even if she hadn’t said anything aloud. The examination of the feelings she’d always had for Five would have usually meant she didn’t even try to comment on it for  _ months _ , usually, but with her emotions so strong she wanted to bite him for more than one reason-

“Let’s go to the hotel,” she said weakly, coaxing her voice to not moan or think of his pounding pulse.

* * *

When they walked inside of the Hotel Oblivion, which Five was 90% certain was either run by vampires trying to keep up the gimmick or the people who really wanted to fuck vampires and were trying to coax them there, in a misinformed and possibly offensive way. They raised their brows at Five, which he supposed had something to do with either his reputation as a vampire hunter or the fact that he clearly looked like one. It was probably akin to the look a prominent Republican politician would get when they brought their male lover to a hotel after ranting about gay marriage at the RNC. 

_ ‘It’s not like that,’  _ Five felt himself wanting to insist, even if it  _ was  _ like that for him.  _ ‘Vanya and I are  _ just  _ friends.’ _

He’d spent enough time protesting about his feelings for his best friend that, at times, he sometimes felt like he could one day convince  _ himself.  _ Unfortunately, that was probably an impossibility. He’d never felt anything for anybody even slightly similar to this. 

In the car, he’d wondered for a few seconds if maybe she somehow felt the same way, but then he’d reminded himself that Vanya was going through a lot right now, that she had an influx of emotions going through her and was probably just confused. Their emotions sometimes got amplified, and he didn’t want to burden her when she was experiencing so much. 

It had occurred to him, though, that he was going to have to let her bite him. 

He didn’t know a lot about blood sharing, except that it would be a  _ pleasurable  _ experience, for both of them. There wasn’t going to be anybody that would offer their neck, though, and she couldn’t steal from a blood bank again. She would have to just drink from him, and they’d work it out where it wasn’t awkward afterwards. 

When they reached the inside of the hotel room, realizing that it had only one bed and it was clearly meant for a  _ couple,  _ Five wasn’t so certain this wouldn’t get awkward.

Whatever, they shared a bed all the time, anyways.

It wasn’t weird. 

It wasn’t. 

“You’re going to have to bite me,” Five stammered out.

Okay, maybe it was. 

Vanya gaped at him, and he wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and die. Thankfully, she spoke, asking him, “What if I do it wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, say, if I didn’t know the difference between arteries and veins, which I totally do, but like hypothetically say I didn’t, and you died miserably.”

Five frowned, pointing to his jugular, “You’d just bite here.” He’d learned his anatomy from being an assassin, thankfully, and not when he and Vanya were juniors, taking the class as a blow off and dicking around in the back and still managing to make perfect scores on their tests (they both had the keen ability to cram.) Five grabbed her hand, sitting down against the bed. She followed, watching him warily as she sat beside him. 

Five’s voice was shaky when he spoke, seriously hoping she wouldn’t notice the fact that his pants were tenting as he looked at her, seeing those fangs and knowing it wasn’t just the fact that she was a vampire that he was turned on right now. That was part of it, though. “Just bite right here,” he breathed, poking his skin. 

She inched forward, running her nail over the skin. His breath hitched, and she groaned. The sound was all he could focus on before her teeth were sinking down on him. 

It was  _ euphoric,  _ the feeling, and Five thought of the Fibonacci sequence but only managed to get to 13. His brain wouldn’t focus on anything except Vanya, who was crawling onto his lap. 

Five gasped, jerking his hips up, and she moaned, not pausing as she drank down his blood. There was no embarrassment that she was expressing, grinding wildly against his erection. When she slipped her hands into his pants, licking against the blood, Five begged her,  _ ‘don’t stop, don’t ever-‘ _

She pulled away, his blood dripping down her chin. If she could blush, he knew she would have as she pulled her hands out of his trousers, sheepishly apologizing.

Dazed, Five said, “It’s fine.”

“The sun is about to be up,” Vanya noticed, looking at the tightly closed curtains. They would certainly keep her protected from the daylight. “I should. I should go to sleep.”

“Okay, V.”

“You’re going to stay, right?”

“Of course,” he promised, laying back on the and pulling her with him. They positioned themselves how they normally slept, cuddling up as they had many, many,  _ many  _ times before. 

Except it felt completely and entirely different now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading so far!!! This will be updated eventually, but idk when!!!


	5. took a right to the end of the line

_ “Took a ride to the end of the line _

_ Where no one ever goes. _

_ Ended up on a broken train with nobody I know. _

_ But the pain and the longing's the same. _

_ Where the dying _

_ Now I'm lost and I'm screaming for help.”  _ -Relax, Take It Easy by Mika

After Vanya had bit Five, everything had gotten all awkward between them, and she wasn’t even sure why. 

She had a suspicion, though. Her best friend had been incapable of denying what she  _ was  _ now, once she’d drank his blood.

That would be just her luck- Five knowing that she’d turned into this monster and  _ then  _ leaving. And, though she was dead already, knowing that Five would have been happier if she’d been  _ completely  _ dead than whatever this was. When she’d slept beside him last night, he’d made a small noise before scooting to the other side of the bed. 

It was all too much, and she fell asleep to a face bloody from tears. 

Now, she was watching Five sleep, wondering if his near non-existent schedule would be advantageous to her, given that she’d been forced to be nocturnal. He was sleeping sounder than usual, neck bruised where her fangs punctured the skin. Lightly, she traced the bruise, and his eyes fluttered open. “Hey, V,” he mumbled. “You sleep okay?”

“Like the de-” Probably not the best thing to say, given her predicament. “Yeah, I slept well.

“Good, I’m glad,” he yawned, stretching his limbs out languidly. “Are you hungry?” 

How many times had he asked her that question before, in a completely different context? He used to always get her food, complaining about how thin she was, convinced that she was starving herself and not just never hungry, sounding like her mother who was convinced that  _ neither  _ of them ate enough. 

Her mother. 

She listened to Five’s pounding pulse, saying, “If I talk to my mother, I want to be as full as possible.” It would be completely gross to say out loud to Five, ‘and your blood tastes really comforting, and I need comfort right now.’ Comparing her best friend to the ice cream rom-com women ate after a break-up seemed like it’d be crossing a line somehow. “But I also feel like you look paler than normal, and I also have no idea whether or not I’ve taken too much blood.”

He shrugged, sitting up a little, “You can always feed me your own blood if I drink too much.”

She was  _ deeply  _ grateful that his senses hadn’t been the ones to be heightened because the somewhat familiar sensation between her legs concerned her that the amplified emotions were going to force her to crawl on top of him and try to satiate another hunger. 

God, this was awful. As soon as she started thinking about one taste, she was-

“W-what kind of, uh… why would you drink  _ my  _ blood?” She really hoped it wasn’t clear where her line of thinking was, feeling so frustrated. 

Five looked confused, patting the bed beside him and encouraging her to sit beside him. When she did, he explained quietly, “Your blood has healing properties, especially for people you’ve bitten before.”

“Why don’t they use that for medicine?” 

If he seemed confused by her question, he didn’t say it, “Well, uh… it would be impractical, for a few reasons.”

“Why?” She leaned closely to him, fangs clicking out as she saw the blush painting his cheeks. 

“Just that, uh…” Five was watching her fangs, and he shifted uncomfortably, adjusting the blankets. She wondered how much disgust he felt for her to be this uncomfortable right now. “A lot of times when a vampire gives blood, there’s a very  _ physical  _ response that people, uh. Get.” 

“Oh, fuck, should I not ever give you mine then?”

“It’s not necessarily a  _ bad  _ physical response.”

Vanya was confused. “What kind of physical response is it, then?”

She’d not realized that she’d leaned so close to him until she set her palm down to steady herself and realized she’d placed it on his lap. Her hand jerked away from him but not before she’d realized  _ why  _ he’d shifted the covers, wondering if he noticed that she’d just touched his-

“Is  _ that _ the response?” Vanya blurted as soon as the thought came to her, wishing she didn’t have the natural instinct to say what was on her mind at all times with him. 

For the first time ever during an awkward conversation, it was  _ Five  _ that started blushing. She listened to his pulse fluttering, worried that she’d upset him by pointing it out. “Yeah,” he mumbled out finally, averting his gaze in embarrassment. “That’s, uh… Yeah.” 

Though Vanya was incapable of her pulse going up or blushing (she had no pulse at all, and she was a little tempted to find a make vampire and ask how they get hard without one), she was just as uncomfortable as Five was. “Well, it’s totally natural!” Apparently, either her words or the overly chirpy tone she used to say them only made the situation worse, and she considered just leaning over and biting him so that it would be less uncomfortable. Hell, it might actually take care of his problem. 

Vanya shouldn’t have let her mind go there because the lack of impulse control she was experiencing made her lean forward. When she spoke, she knew there was a glamor in her voice and that he’d be incapable of lying, “Tell me the truth, will biting you be bad for you?”

“N-not bad because I c-could take your blood.” She frowned; it was the same response he’d given earlier. Did he always tell her the truth when he spoke to her? 

“Do you want me to bite you?” Vanya’s incisors scraped at her lips, gnawing on them and worrying that it would cause her own blood to bubble up. She needed to know, though, that he was  _ okay _ with it. Even if he was her best friend, he was still raised to despise everybody like her. 

_ “Yes,” _ Five gasped, and, seconds later, she was sinking her fangs into his neck. She didn’t even think when her hand slipped into his boxers, closing her grip onto his erection, hearing the almost  _ shy  _ way he moaned underneath her. Climbing more fully onto his lap, moving her hand away and grinding onto him instead, she let herself savor the comforting taste of him. 

“You don’t-” Five’s voice broke off with another mewl. “You don’t have to-  _ Vanya.” _

Her movements grew more frantic, focusing on her own pleasure rather than his, aware he was already halfway there. She got the idea that this was somewhat of a standard response when vampires bite humans, based on the way that Five hadn’t seemed surprised at all by her response. Well, except for the fact that they were best friends, and this was completely fucking  _ weird  _ for a much different reason. 

She pulled away when she worried she’d taken too much, watching the blissed out expression on Five’s face. The thought of what he’d taste like came back to her mind, and, with only a glance up to him and a quick question that he nodded to with a completely stunned expression, she pushed his boxers down a little and closed her mouth around him, sinking down enough that she nearly gagged. 

His fingers clutched her hair, knotting down, and she wrapped her fingers around him, jerking him off where she couldn’t quite fit him inside of her mouth, with no finesse at all that he clearly didn’t mind, hissing out a mixture of praise and  _ ‘thank you’ _ s that made her wonder if this was always all she’d needed to do to get him to be a little more polite. 

When he was spilling into her mouth, slobber and cum leaking down her chin, she looked up at him, at his heavy-lidded eyes. She pulled away, and his face softened. 

But at that moment, the weight of everything she’d done was suddenly apparent. When she stumbled away, seeing his eyes move from confused to panicked before she was using all of her new strength and speed to run away, horrified at what she’d just done. 

Her Maker had been right; she’d spend eternity alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!!!💕💕💕


	6. so far away, but still so near

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ll be posting a few updates in a row, so, if you subscribe to me, I really hope you’re not about to be spammed with emails. However, thank you to everyone who follows this story, and thank you to Chevalier_Barthelemy who gave me the inspiration to update!!!!

_ “So far away, but still so near _

_ The lights go on, the music dies _

_ But you don't see me standing here _

_ I just came to say goodbye”  _ -Dancing On My Own by Robyn

When Vanya ran off again, he was forced to start searching for her again. She was much faster than him now, and he’d been somewhat dazed from the bite and the.. other stuff, struggling to tug on his pants or even stand up. His mind kept flashing between everything that had happened, and everytime he thought of her fangs on him, his pants would become tighter. 

She seemed to be better at being elusive at this point, which, considering she’d been sobbing at a blood bank last time, that wasn’t exactly a difficult feat. Still, she was nearly impossible to find, making him wonder if she had help. His tracking skills should have enabled him to find her at this point. 

Worried, he stopped the car, wishing she’d given him some of her blood, knowing that it might draw him to her easily, given that he’d develop a bond with her that the ‘favored’ often did. They weren’t precisely something Five had ever seen himself becoming, but he didn’t really care if it meant that Vanya wasn’t out getting herself hurt. Not everybody had his bond with her, and he knew some of his colleagues would easily kill her, even if they knew that she was so special to Five. Possibly, they’d do it  _ especially  _ because of their relationship, considering the fact that the general belief was that they lost all of their humanity as soon as they became vampires.

He didn’t know if he believed that. At least, not for Vanya. She still loved her mother, and she was still his best friend. There was nothing she’d done to indicate she wasn’t the person he loved. 

Five  _ needed  _ her. He’d always desired being around her, but, after experiencing her bite, he found that he could hardly breathe with the urgency that had overtaken him, needing her. 

Just as his hands started to slip involuntarily into his jeans, he heard movement, groaning and grabbing a stake before hopping out of his car, thoroughly annoyed.

“If you try to use that on me,” a voice lilted from behind him. “I’ll give her the command to kill herself.”

He whirled around, and two figures stepped into the light. As he took sight of Vanya’s terrified expression, he wanted to go and kill her Maker, but it was an impossibility. However quickly he got to her, it would take just a single word before Vanya was compelled to do whatever she asked. 

“What are you doing to her?” Five snapped.

“Teaching her a lesson about trusting somebody like  _ you.” _

Five stiffened. 

“Vanya, darling, if he moves his stake or hand at all, please pierce yourself with it.”

Vanya whimpered, and Five didn’t dare move, feeling like he could barely breathe.

“Now, walk over to him.”

She stumbled forward, clearly trying to keep herself from crying. He’d seen her make this face so many times before, features seizing up as her face began to crumple. Five wanted nothing more than to wrap her in his arms, take her away from this woman, but he knew that if he even tried, his best friend would be dead.

“Do you know what he does for a living, Vanya?” her Maker purred, sounding nearly the same as any of the compulsion he’d ever witnessed, but he knew she was using the sire bond right now, that Vanya would be unable to resist her words regardless.

“Yes, I do,” Vanya said, setting her chin stubbornly before turning to face the woman. “And it changes nothing for me. I love him.”

Her Maker flicked a brow up. Despite the fact that he was quite possibly about to die, he wondered what she meant by  _ love,  _ how she meant the words. 

“Wrap your fingers around his stake.”

With a small, frustrated noise, Vanya grabbed the stake he was holding, hissing out as she touched it. The carvings on there were created with the sole purpose of causing her kind immense pain, able to stun them with it before the stake pierced their hearts. Her face crumpled more, and then bloody tears started spilled over.

Without moving his hand at all, Five asked, “She’s learned her lesson, hasn’t she? Stop doing this to her.”

“Actually, I don’t think she has,” the vampire commented, eyeing the way Vanya was weeping distastefully. “Until she feels no urge to be around a vampire hunter ever again, she will hold that stake, and she will watch you as she does.”

Vanya whined, staring up at him, gripping his stake tighter, like she was trying to prove she could. He saw the tears in her eyes, similar to ones that he’d brushed away when she’d nearly died at a vampire’s hands years ago. She’d been barely conscious, only drifting into consciousness once when he’d taken her to the hospital. However, when she’d woken up in the hospital, she’d immediately started sobbing, clutching his hands and begging him to not leave her behind. 

If he hadn’t left her behind in the first place for that assignment, if he had watched her better, if he had done his job and  _ protected  _ her, this never would have happened. 

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, and she started to let out small sobs, holding the stake tighter. “I’m so sorry, V. There’s no excuse for-”

She shrieked, agonized, trying to move forward, like she was thinking of piercing herself. He took in the sight of her bloodied and burned hands, realizing that she would never learn the lesson. 

Not unless he made her. 

It was either letting her leave him behind or watching her die in front of him. 

In his head, he heard Tatiana saying that he’d failed her, and he made his choice.

“Go, Vanya,” he snarled, hoping that she couldn’t tell from the way that his heart was beating that he was lying to her. “I don’t want you here, go away  _ now.” _

“You’re not telling the truth,” she snapped, inching forward and pressing the tip of the stake to her heart.

Panicked, he stammered out, “Your kind  _ disgusts  _ me. I am not standing in front of my best friend right now. You killed her. You took her from me, stole her soul.”

She flinched, dragging the stake against her skin, sobbing weakly. 

“It’s a good thing Tatiana never saw you like this,” Five said, not sure if he sounded anything but wooden. Either way, he was clearly doing what he was set out for. “Never saw you become a  _ monster.” _

When she winced, hand uncurling from the stake, he wondered if it would kill him to stab it into his own heart. 

Vanya dragged her feet to her Maker, trembling.

“Do you still love him?” the vampire asked.

“Yes,” Vanya said, and he glanced up in confusion, heart filling with hope, regardless of the fact that there was absolutely  _ no  _ way for this to turn out well at all. 

It was immediately squashed with her next words, however. “But I never want to see him again, so I’ve learned my lesson, ma’am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!!


	7. true that love in withdrawal was the weeping of me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note: I have added a few more tags to this, so please make sure you’re okay with everything included before reading the updates!!! As well as this, there will most likely be a sequel to this fic, but I only have a slight idea for it as of this point (and more so just how I want to end _this_ one).

_ “True that I saw her hair like _

_ The branch of a tree _

_ Willow dancin' on air before covering me _

_ Under garden and calicos _

_ Over canopy dabbled long ago _

_ True that love in withdrawal _

_ Was the weepin' of me _

_ That the sound of the _

_ Saw must be known by the tree _

_ Must be felt 'fore the fight, the call _

_ Friendly fire, but that was long ago”  _ -Would That I, Hozier

“You are going to have to actually feed, you know,” Lila said blandly, flipping through a copy of  _ Twilight.  _ “I’m starting to grow bored of your moping.”

“Why do you hate Five?” Vanya asked her, pressing her hand to her groaning stomach. She wasn’t sure if it was normal to feel like Five’s blood was calling to her, but she could feel her teeth trying to force themselves through her gums again. Every time she thought of Five, she could feel her canines protest, like,  _ ‘Go get a snack from your best friend!’  _ Apparently her body didn’t know that it wasn’t friends with Five anymore, and that Vanya was done with him completely. “Isn’t kind of… pointless to be upset with a vampire hunter for doing their job?”

Lila rolled her eyes. “You sound like you’re defending him.”

“He’s my…” She trailed off. “I just think that he’s…”

There was literally no way that she could finish this thought. 

“He tastes good,” Vanya finally said, which wasn’t a lie at all. In fact, though she hadn’t tasted much of anybody, she would gladly spend the rest of her life licking his neck.

Her Maker raised her brows. “You need to find somebody that’s not a hunter. Their blood tastes awful, from all the holy water they drink.”

“Five doesn’t drink holy water,” Vanya protested. “And his blood tastes nice… like sunshine.”

“You’re a vampire.”

“And?”

“Sunshine is  _ bad  _ for you.”

“Lila, when you say things like that, I get the idea that you  _ want  _ me.”

Apparently, the most painful thing about  _ Twilight  _ was having it launched directly at one’s nose. Vanya frowned as her nose started bleeding, “How do I have blood?”

“Dead bodies still have blood, don’t they?”

“But I don’t have a heartbeat,” Vanya argued, wiping her nose with the back of her arm before pointing to her chest, which only moved when she breathed on instinct.  _ “And  _ how do male vampires like… you know.”

“Are you asking me how male vampires can get erections?”

“Yeah, like. In  _ Twilight,  _ for example, how does Edward father a child when he has no blood flow?”

Like she hadn’t heard Vanya’s (very valid) question, Lila quipped, “Do you think if I dropped you off at the fire station they would take you?”

Vanya sighed, flouncing to the bed that she was supposed to sleep on and dramatically falling onto it. “You know, you keep shaming Five about being a vampire hunter, but he was more willing to answer my questions than you.”

“That’s because he wanted you to suck his dick.” 

She shrugged. “He _was_ more receptive to questions, though.” 

It had been nice to ask Five questions about how to be a vampire, and, really, she enjoyed an outside perspective. She felt like an outsider already, so it made sense that the advice she got would be from someone who wasn’t quite the norm. Her Maker was also  _ mean,  _ and she didn’t like her. 

“You realize I can  _ still  _ read your thoughts, and that your internal monologue reads like a twelve year old’s diary, right?” 

That seemed unfair.

“It’s not.”

Really, it  _ was,  _ though. She hadn’t even had a chance to know what it  _ meant  _ to be one of her kind. Did she need to start dressing a certain way? Would she get discounts for certain stores, like those pop-up Halloween stores? Was there some sort of registry system? It seemed like they’d need some sort of government, right? Surely they had some sort of bureaucracy among them. 

“I’m going to go feed, and, hopefully, I will not be able to hear whatever  _ this _ —“ She gestured to Vanya. “Is.”

When the door closed behind her, Vanya didn’t find that she felt alone. It was late at night, and she had essentially been freed to do what she wanted. As she picked up the book again, her mind went back to the man at  _ Barnes & Noble.  _ How he’d been walking forward to her, ready to give her his blood. Despite the fact that she was certain that Five’s blood tasted great, she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because he’d given her the only fresh blood she’d ever tried. It wasn’t that the blood bank blood was gross or anything, but it felt impersonal. Like a business transaction. Five, though, he tasted very—

No. She couldn’t bite Five again. Because Five thought she was a monster, and he hated her, and she refused to ever see him again after saying something so cruel.

Her hand traced over the apple on the cover, making her decision and using her strength to get back to the bookstore. 

As soon as she stumbled inside, his scent called to her, and she nearly gasped as she inhaled it, finding him quickly. 

“You’re the one, from the other day,” the man commented, dropping the book he’d been stocking. “How did you—”

“I need you to take me somewhere.” She didn’t use her glamour, having figured out how to control it before it naturally happened. “Could you do that?”

“Sure.” He followed her as she tripped over her feet. When he grabbed her hand, she nearly cried out. “What... what is your name?”

“Vanya.”

“I’m Ben,” he said quietly. “You’re not human, are you?”

When she whimpered, he squeezed her hand. 

“It’s okay,” he assured. “I’ve never heard of a glamour being as strong as yours though. Last week was the first time I’d ever been affected by one.”

“Are you a vampire?”

He shook his head. “Not quite human, though.”

“What does that mean?” Her mind went to  _ Twilight,  _ and she groaned, “Are werewolves real too?”

“I mean, yeah, but  _ I’m _ not one.”

“What are you?”

Ben didn’t answer her question, just continuing to let her walk with him. When they’d been silent for a bit, he told her, “My blood won’t be able to sustain you completely because I’ve already… you probably wouldn’t understand. The important thing is that he wouldn’t mind if you bit me, I don’t think. You seem pretty young, so I’d imagine he’d think of it as some sort of annual act of community service.”

“Are you a subjugate?”

“I mean, there are probably kinder ways to put it, but yes.” He opened a car door, and she realized he’d taken her to his car. “Is this going to be a good place for you to feed? I could take you to my home, if you’d like. My husband would love to meet you, I’m sure.”

“How long have you been alive?” She’d never believed in the stories of subjugates, how they could live for hundreds of years.

“I was born in 1935.” He shrugged. “The aging benefits are nice, I suppose.”

“Why didn’t your husband ever turn you?”

Ben looked confused. “Because I didn’t really want him to? It never sounded like a very exciting process, and I probably won’t even start  _ aging _ for another thirty years.”

That made sense, she supposed. “Would your husband mind if I go to your house?”

“Not at all! Though he’ll probably make me give you my wrist instead of my neck, just because—”

“Does that happen for everyone?” Vanya blurted. “I thought it was just me. Is that why I wanted to… is that why I reacted that way to Five?”

“Uh, if Five is somebody you fed from, it would be normal to feel desire for him when you feed yes.”

Vanya wondered if it was normal to feel  _ more  _ than just desire for him. When she’d awoken, she’d started to think that the love she felt for him wasn’t just… what best friends felt for their best friends. “Were you and your husband friends before he was a vampire?”

“Klaus? No. He was turned by our late husband  _ many  _ years ago. Or, well, we never could marry him, but we thought of him as our husband.”

“What do you mean  _ late  _ husband? Aren’t vampires immortal?”

“He was killed,” Ben explained, and she heard his heart stammer a beat. “By a vampire hunter. Reginald Hargreeves the Fifth, the son of that bigot you hear on the news sometimes.”

* * *

His hands shook from the alcohol in his system, causing him to drop the bottle of Everclear he’d been holding. With each breath of air, he could feel his own nausea trying to prevail against him, and he was getting closer and closer to not being able to resist the urge to gag.

In spite of the fact that he was drunk, or maybe  _ because  _ of the fact that he was drunk, he kept thinking of Vanya’s bite, whimpering each time he remembered the feelings of her lips against him, of her fangs piercing his skin. He wondered what she’d think if she saw him now, drinking his troubles away in a hotel room and ignoring calls from his job. Tonight, he’d been supposed to kill another vampire, but he wasn't going to do that, knowing that if Vanya caught him in the act she really would never try to see him again. There was still the slightest hope that she’d forgive him for all of the countless awful things he’d done, simply because he’d given the order to do them.

Five wondered if other assassins felt this way, or if it was just that he was a vampire hunter. When the only person he’d ever loved unconditionally became a vampire, he’d been able to see his job a little more clearly. Though he was sure there was usually some sort of political or personal agenda with a lot of the orders for humans he killed, he’d been able to reassure himself that most of them weren’t necessarily  _ good  _ people. However, Five knew for a fact that he’d likely killed a few vampires that were just as innocent as his best friend. Vampires that had simply existed, and Reginald had wanted them gone. How easily he’d killed them without a second thought.

One of his first memories was being locked underground, in an entrapment that was supposed to resemble a grave. Father had simply told him, ‘Your assignment is to get out of here.’ His hands had been bloodied by the time that he’d escaped, feeling like all of the insects that had been crawling on him would never go away. 

When Five had asked him why he’d done that to him, his father had said, ‘This is what vampires do to their young. Their very first experience as monsters is to crawl out of their own graves, and this is what they do to their  _ own  _ kind. Imagine what they’d do to  _ our  _ kind.’

At the time, Five had been so horrified that they’d do that to their young that he’d internalized that they were evil, cruel, and deplorable. There had been many lessons like that. 

Now, though, Five couldn’t help but think,  _ ‘Didn’t he do that to me, though? How different is my father’s cruelty from their own?’ _

And the truth was, the only vampire that he’d ever killed that he knew deserved to die had been the one who’d nearly killed Vanya. Vanya, who at any moment could be killed by a vampire hunter. It was all just a cycle of killing, and the most innocent person he knew seemed to always be in the crossfire.

What  _ could  _ he have done differently, though? If his friend had d—

No, he’d done the right thing in making Vanya leave him behind. 

It just left him with an unbearable ache, with a desire to beg her to come back to him and let him spend the rest of his life making it up to her. He’d never thought her a monster at all, and, even if she was a monster, he loved her, nonetheless. She was his best friend, his  _ home,  _ and she was out there somewhere, learning how to become a vampire by her maker, who wanted him dead. 

The last words she’d said to him when she was human were an exasperated goodbye, and the last words he’d likely ever hear her say to him were that she never wished to see him again. He deserved that, and more. If he hadn’t ever come into her life in the first place, she’d be living a good life now.

She was his home, and now he was stranded on the streets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates will happen when they happen!!!💕


	8. apathetic to the devil’s face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that I updated this one pretty recently, but I had already started on chapter eight a while back. There will _also_ be an update for “the five phases of taking advantage of a professor’s public meltdown” today, and, if there are any fics you guys would like to see updated in the next few days, feel free to tell me in the comments!!!

_ “Hangman, we played _

_ Rubber soul with a razor blade _

_ Behind the church, hiding place _

_ It was a long joke 'til the punch line came _

_ Can you read my mind? _

_ Read my mind”  _ -Youth Without Youth, Metric

She didn’t know  _ what  _ she was supposed to do. Obviously, if she said anything, she’d be endangering both herself and Five to Klaus and Ben, but she couldn’t just sit in their house, knowing that her best friend had killed their husband. Her hands shook as she listened to Klaus talk, offering up Ben’s neck with a grin. Ben only rolled his eyes at him good-naturedly, encouraging Vanya to bite him. The desire to leave their place because she knew it was awful of her to be there was at war with the desire to  _ feed  _ again. Her throat had never felt so parched, like if she opened up her mouth any further, she’d start gagging. 

“Oh, the baby vamp is afraid to hurt you,” Klaus teased, clawing at Ben’s neck and drawing blood. “Come here, baby vamp.” 

The desire to feed won over, and Vanya clambered over, kneeling in front of Klaus with wide eyes. 

“Open up,” Klaus purred, and Ben elbowed his stomach, sending him a reproachful look. 

As Vanya climbed onto his lap, she could feel both of them staring at her, and she nearly whimpered at the rush of desire and empowerment that was coursing through her, lips pressing to Ben’s neck, grinding against the erection she could feel against her thigh. 

“She’s got quite an appetite, huh?” Klaus commented, hand dragging over her spine. She really did whimper then, and she heard a small chuckle from him. “Tell me, baby vamp, have you ever drank from one of your own kind before?”

Vanya turned to him, eyes wide, blood trickling down her lips. “No, sir.”

“Oh, she’s got  _ manners _ and everything, Ben,” Klaus pulled her onto his lap. “Do you want to drink from one of your kind, kiddo?”

When she nodded eagerly, he bared his throat to her, and her teeth clicked out, sinking them into his neck without any trouble at all, immediately drinking down the substance, surprised to find the way the ache in her throat was quickly leaving. She felt Ben’s hands on her, and she guided him where she wanted him, beyond caring about propriety. 

All at once, she felt so tired and dizzy that she was certain she would pass out, but then Ben was lifting her up. 

“What did you do?” Ben hissed. “She’s clearly never done any drugs before—”

His voice was getting all warbled, and she slumped in his grasp, not sure what was going on and so, so afraid. 

She wanted Five, her best friend. He always made her feel safe. When she would have nightmares and he’d rub her back, or when he’d make her soup when she was sick, once even trying the borscht her mother always made when she needed comfort. Vanya wanted him to an unbearable degree, needed her best friend so badly—

“Don’t worry, Vanya,” Ben told her quietly, laying her down on a bed. “Neither of us is going to hurt you at all. Klaus is just an idiot and took a bunch of shit before you got here, so you probably got a little bit into your bloodstream.”

When he started to leave, she grabbed his hand, “Can you please stay with me? I’m really scared.”

Bloodied tears slipped down her cheeks, and the hesitancy in Ben’s expression left. Softly, he said, “I’ll tell Klaus I’m going to be in here, but I’m going to sleep on the armchair across from you instead, okay? That way you won’t be alone, but I won’t be disrespecting any boundaries you might not want me to cross when you’re not under the influence of… whatever substance you are on.”

“Will I die?”

“You’re already dead, Vanya.” Ben looked suddenly pained, like he didn’t want to be sharing that with her. Maybe it was the way she howled in anguish as he said it. “But the drugs will only be in your system for a few hours at most. You can sleep it off, don’t worry. Vampires tend to to only experience a high for a short time, so you’ll be okay.”

While Ben stayed by her side, as she knew he would, she couldn’t help but imagine that his deceased husband was probably just as kind as her hosts. She knew that Five would have just been following his orders, but she wondered if it even mattered. Clearly, the loss of their husband was something that they would never recover from, and she wondered how many other innocent people Five had killed, simply because they were vampires. If they had never been friends, he would have certainly killed  _ her,  _ too. 

And how was she supposed to be friends with someone who would  _ kill _ her? 

Lila had been right, was the thing. She couldn’t associate with someone who would kill her kind. In a century, these would be the people she would be around, and Five would be dead. Vanya had to move on from him, or else she would be spending eternity alone. 

Maybe Five would understand it, in that context. That he killed her kind, and associating with him would only lead to her being an outcast. 

Vanya didn’t think she could handle being alone. 

By the time she’d fallen asleep, her tears had saturated the pillow.

* * *

When the haze of the hangover had left him, the distinct urge to be bitten again was coming back. He almost could sense  _ where  _ she was, like there was a path in front of him that he could follow. Five started trembling, clutching his pounding pulse, needing to go to her. 

Was it that she was in danger? Even when she was still human, he used to get the urge to check on her, usually after particularly rough assignments, to make sure she was safe. Sometimes, he would take a few days off, stopping by the Sokolovs and convincing Vanya to ditch work too, spending the entirety of that time cuddled up to her, feeling more and more comforted with each breath she let out. 

It occurred to him that maybe her drinking from him had instilled some sort of bond between them, and that she might actually be in danger. Without even a second thought, he shoved on his hunting outfit (which used to prompt Vanya to call him ‘Five Helsing,’ saying that there was no  _ actual  _ purpose to wearing a black leather jacket and boots unless his goal was to look slutty when he killed), glancing around the hotel room and trying to decide if there was anything else he needed. 

By the time he was fully ready, though, he couldn’t resist the urge to move forward any longer, not even using any reason, just following the invisible string that she was tugging on. As soon as he was in his car, he started speeding down the road, muttering curses to himself as he did his best to avoid hitting random pedestrians, who were now the bane of his existence. 

He pulled up to a house that looked eerily familiar, nearly flinching as he realized why. 

Five had killed somebody in this house, and Vanya was inside of it. 

Panicking, he darted inside, thankful for the daylight that was keeping him safe while walking into the den. His hand gripped his stake, dipping his head into every room, until he finally found the one that held his best friend.

She was sleeping, but there was blood all of her cheeks and on her pillow, indicating she’d just been crying. There was a human seated on an armchair, snoring softly, a trail of dried blood trickled down his neck. 

Vanya had fed from him. Based on how messy she was, at least, considering the fact that most vampires were a little more delicate when they fed from somebody. There was an air to the man in front of her that made Five think there was something… not quite right about him, until he finally realized that he was looking at a vampire’s subjugate.

It would be impossible for Vanya to have created a subjugate in the amount of time she’d been gone, and he was also pretty certain that she’d already somehow made Five one. He was _also_ pretty sure that vampires could only ever have one subjugate at a time, and there was no way that he’d driven straight to her without _some_ sort of bond.

None of that was important, though. If she was in the den of a vampire old enough to have a subjugate as long as he likely had, when Five had killed somebody within their coven, she was in unimaginable danger, and he had to protect her. Without a second thought, he wrapped his arms around his best friend and scooped her up. 

And almost dropped her when he realized that there was no way that he could take her out of this place, not without covering her up. He searched around the room, trying to decide if blankets were enough to protect her. Five knew that, on the off-chance this vampire kept any coffins, he could  _ technically  _ transport her in one of those, but it would attract a lot of attention. Usually there were a few humans that would pay attention to vampire homes, either activists or groupies, and there was absolutely no way that he could get out of a vampires’ den, in his hunting uniform, holding a coffin. They’d be on his ass immediately, and he didn’t imagine anybody would be on his side. 

Five could have likely handled being on his own for the rest of his life, except that it meant that Vanya was now in danger. In alienating everybody that he’d ever known, he had no idea where he could possibly take her, where he knew that she would be safe. 

_ Except. _

There _was_ a solution, glaringly obvious in front of him. And he knew that no matter what had happened between them, it didn’t matter. 

So, Five wrapped Vanya within his hunting jacket (taking care to get out all things that could possibly damage her skin) before he wrapped her completely within a complete coating of blankets. Because she didn’t  _ have _ to breathe, he didn’t worry about suffocating her at all, taking care to have every single part of her body under at least three inches of a barrier. By the time he’d gotten that task done, he carried her body to his car, putting her up front with him so he could keep an eye on the bundle of blankets beside him, mentally preparing himself what to do if it started smoking. 

“I know that you don’t want to be around me,” Five told her unconscious body, a little nervously. “And I know that you’d probably… that you’d probably prefer to be around your own kind, at least for now.”

He sighed. “It’s just that I couldn’t have  _ left  _ you there. You don’t know what I’ve done, with my job, but… Vanya, I wish that I could go back. I wish that I could change things. Not just because my best friend was turned, though that’s a major part of it.” Images of the vampires he’d killed were beginning to flood into his mind. “If what I did to them  _ ever  _ happened to you, I…”

Five couldn’t even finish his sentence, tears welling up quickly and spilling over before he could manage to get a hold of himself. “What I’ve done in my lifetime… There’s no excuses for it.”

And then he said what Tatiana had made clear, the day he’d gone searching for her, unaware of what had happened. “If you had died, it would have been my fault.” 

With that in the air, he kept onto the path of Tatiana Sokolov’s place, certain that she was the best hope for his best friend. Even though he had no idea how she’d react to seeing him, nor how she’d react to seeing her daughter having become a vampire. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!!💕💕💕 Updates will happen when they happen!!!

**Author's Note:**

> Check out the playlist [here.](https://open.spotify.com/user/booyoushipwhore/playlist/4lnAamEWnkQmgkG7x2ubtf?si=Z8yk7PxpRPyy53M9W8U82Q)
> 
> Check out the moodboard [here.](https://fiveyaaas.tumblr.com/post/634005515159191552/the-voice-spoke-again-a-chill-in-her-voice-not)


End file.
